Tag Archives: i write letters

in which I write letters: “female patients ONLY”?? #wtf

25 Thursday Jun 2015

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Dear Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center,

I had an appointment at your radiology department this afternoon to follow up on a potential irregularity in my left breast (thankfully all is well!). Overall I had an exceptional experience: your reception staff, mammography and ultrasound technicians, and doctor were all courteous and professional. The decor was a little overwhelmingly floral, and was it really necessary to have that much pink in the color scheme — right down to the pink floral sticker they affixed to the relevant spot on my boob? But I can roll my eyes at those design decisions and get on with my day.

What I am uninterested in rolling my eyes at and moving on from is this:

IMG_20150625_145204Several years ago, when my wife had an appointment in your radiology department we happened to notice this sign in passing and found it troubling. I had hoped, upon my return today, to find that your policies and signage had changed — but had my phone ready to hand for snapping this picture if they had not. And here we are.

My problem with this sign and policy is quite simple: Male people (assigned and/or identified) can get breast cancer or experience other physical issues needing breast imaging services. Whether or not you provide those services to male individuals elsewhere, or make exceptions to the stated policy on a case-by-case basis, the sign is alienating. It is unwelcoming not just to men but to women (like me and my wife) who find spaces that are women-only by policy to be unwelcoming, uncomfortable spaces. To put it another way, I am more comfortable accessing healthcare in a place welcome to people of all combinations of sex, gender, and sexuality than I am seeking care in a place that explicitly states that it only welcomes certain types of bodies and/or identities to pass through its doors.

Given that our family’s health center, Fenway Health — a leading provider of respectful, holistic care to trans and genderqueer individuals — refers patients regularly to your institution for necessary clinical care, I would have expected better from you. I am disappointed that in 2015 you continue to use signage (and presumably enforce policies) that are so exclusionary.

I hope the next time I have reason to visit your radiology department I won’t have cause to pull my camera out of my messenger bag.

Sincerely,
Anna

in which I write letters: open letter to SAA re: #thatdarnlist

10 Wednesday Sep 2014

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Society of American Archivists
Attn: Council members
17 North State Street
Suite 1425
Chicago, IL 60602-4061

10 September 2014

Dear members of the SAA Council,

I am writing to you as a member and critic of the Archives & Archivists listserv. My name is likely familiar to some of you given my role in the recent debates about A&A and its future. I have been part of on-list discussions about the culture of the list, am the author of two lengthy blog posts (“once upon a listserv” and “once again upon a listserv”) critiquing list dynamics — one of which prompted personal attacks on-list by those who disagreed with my views and approach — and I also participate in discussions about #thatdarnlist on Twitter. Those experiences have led me to form the Amiable Archivists Salon, a website and email list focused on issues of professional culture and inclusion in the archival and associated professions.

I am also the founding co-chair of New England Archivists’ LGBTQ Issues Roundtable, and have studied and written on issues related to gender, sexuality, and inequality for over a decade, online and off. My perspective is, of course, specific to my own areas of expertise and experience. Yet my observations regarding A&A are informed by listening to and engaging with many others on questions of community, power, privilege, and belonging.

With all of these contexts in mind, there is much that could be said about the complaints and critiques on and around the Archives & Archivists list that have been raised in past months. I’ve already articulated many of them myself in emails, blog posts, and on Twitter. Today I am writing directly to you for the first time to raise concerns about the recently-revised terms of participation and how they were implemented. I believe the new terms and their roll-out send a clear and troubling message regarding what SAA considers as speakable and unspeakable, appropriately visible and best handled invisibly, within our professional community.

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the statement on trans-inclusive feminsm and womanism [signed!]

19 Thursday Sep 2013

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I’ve been seeing this statement coming through on my RSS and Twitter feed for the last few days, and have finally had a moment to sit down and sign it. 

It should be upsetting to us all that the need to specify trans-inclusive feminism and womanism exists, but it does so I want to spell out my support. I also want to take this opportunity to thank the trans people and allies who have pushed me — in person and in print — over the past ten years to learn about trans issues and un-learn toxic myths and stereotypes. You have immeasurably enriched my life and my feminism. I will do my best to live up to the vision all you have challenged us to fulfill.

[text via feministsfightingtransphobia]

We, the undersigned trans* and cis scholars, writers, artists, and educators, want to publicly and openly affirm our commitment to a trans*-inclusive feminism and womanism.

There has been a noticeable increase in transphobic feminist activity this summer: the forthcoming book by Sheila Jeffreys from Routledge; the hostile and threatening anonymous letter sent to Dallas Denny after she and Dr. Jamison Green wrote to Routledge regarding their concerns about that book; and the recent widely circulated statement entitled “Forbidden Discourse: The Silencing of Feminist Critique of ‘Gender,’” signed by a number of prominent, and we regret to say, misguided, feminists have been particularly noticeable.  And all this is taking place in the climate of virulent mainstream transphobia that has emerged following the coverage of Chelsea Manning’s trial and subsequent statement regarding her gender identity, and the recent murders of young trans women of color, including Islan Nettles and Domonique Newburn, the latest targets in a long history of violence against trans women of color.  Given these events, it is important that we speak out in support of feminism and womanism that support trans* people.

We are committed to recognizing and respecting the complex construction of sexual/gender identity; to recognizing trans* women as women and including them in all women’s spaces; to recognizing trans* men as men and rejecting accounts of manhood that exclude them; to recognizing the existence of genderqueer, non-binary identifying people and accepting their humanity; to rigorous, thoughtful, nuanced research and analysis of gender, sex, and sexuality that accept trans* people as authorities on their own experiences and understands that the legitimacy of their lives is not up for debate; and to fighting the twin ideologies of transphobia and patriarchy in all their guises.

Transphobic feminism ignores the identification of many trans* and genderqueer people as feminists or womanists and many cis feminists/womanists with their trans* sisters, brothers, friends, and lovers; it is feminism that has too often rejected them, and not the reverse. It ignores the historical pressures placed by the medical profession on trans* people to conform to rigid gender stereotypes in order to be “gifted” the medical aid to which they as human beings are entitled.  By positing “woman” as a coherent, stable identity whose boundaries they are authorized to police, transphobic feminists reject the insights of intersectional analysis, subordinating all other identities to womanhood and all other oppressions to patriarchy.  They are refusing to acknowledge their own power and privilege.

We recognize that transphobic feminists have used violence and threats of violence against trans* people and their partners and we condemn such behavior.  We recognize that transphobic rhetoric has deeply harmful effects on trans* people’s real lives; witness CeCe MacDonald’s imprisonment in a facility for men.  We further recognize the particular harm transphobia causes to trans* people of color when it combines with racism, and the violence it encourages.

When feminists exclude trans* women from women’s shelters, trans* women are left vulnerable to the worst kinds of violent, abusive misogyny, whether in men’s shelters, on the streets, or in abusive homes.  When feminists demand that trans* women be excluded from women’s bathrooms and that genderqueer people choose a binary-marked bathroom, they make participation in the public sphere near-impossible, collaborate with a rigidity of gender identities that feminism has historically fought against, and erect yet another barrier to employment.  When feminists teach transphobia, they drive trans* students away from education and the opportunities it provides.

We also reject the notion that trans* activists’ critiques of transphobic bigotry “silence” anybody.  Criticism is not the same as silencing. We recognize that the recent emphasis on the so-called violent rhetoric and threats that transphobic feminists claim are coming from trans* women online ignores the 40+ – year history of violent and eliminationist rhetoric directed by prominent feminists against trans* women, trans* men, and genderqueer people.  It ignores the deliberate strategy of certain well-known anti-trans* feminists of engaging in gleeful and persistent harassment, baiting, and provocation of trans* people, particularly trans* women, in the hope of inciting angry responses, which are then utilized to paint a false portrayal of trans* women as oppressors and cis feminist women as victims. It ignores the public outing of trans* women that certain transphobic feminists have engaged in regardless of the damage it does to women’s lives and the danger in which it puts them.  And it relies upon the pernicious rhetoric of collective guilt, using any example of such violent rhetoric, no matter the source — and, just as much, the justified anger of any one trans* woman — to condemn all trans* women, and to justify their continued exclusion and the continued denial of their civil rights.

Whether we are cis, trans*, binary-identified, or genderqueer, we will not let feminist or womanist discourse regress or stagnate; we will push forward in our understandings of gender, sex, and sexuality across disciplines.  While we respect the great achievements and hard battles fought by activists in the 1960s and 1970s, we know that those activists are not infallible and that progress cannot stop with them if we hope to remain intellectually honest, moral, and politically effective.  Most importantly, we recognize that theories are not more important than real people’s real lives; we reject any theory of gender, sex, or sexuality that calls on us to sacrifice the needs of any subjugated or marginalized group.  People are more important than theory.

We are committed to making our classrooms, our writing, and our research inclusive of trans* people’s lives.

Signed,

Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook (librarian, historian, writer)
Allston, Massachusetts
USA

[click through for the full list of signatories]

in which I write letters: dear alma mater … again

06 Thursday Sep 2012

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Diane De Young
Associate Director of the Hope Fund
Hope College
PO Box 9000
Holland, MI 49424-9000

4 September 2012 

Dear Ms. De Young,

Thank you for your recent letter alerting me to the upcoming Hope College Phonathon. I am writing to explain why I will not be contributing to the campaign; you are welcome to share my reasons with whomever might benefit from this information. 

As I’m sure your records indicate, I attended Hope College from 1998-2005, graduating with a BA in Women’s Studies and History (double major). During my seven years at Hope, I formed lasting relationships with my faculty mentors and received what I would consider a superior college education. While at Hope, I benefited from merit and need-based scholarships, as well as the tuition benefit awarded to children of Hope College employees (my father is Mark Cook, director of the Hope-Geneva Bookstore). The quality of my Hope College experience was part of what enabled me to make the most of my graduate education at Simmons College, where I completed an MA in History and an MS in Library Science. Today, I serve as the Reference Librarian at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and this past March I had the rewarding experience of returning to Hope College as a guest speaker at the Women’s Studies Celebration. I was recently asked to provide a letter of support for Dr. Jeanne Petit as she is considered for promotion to the rank of Full Professor, a request it was my pleasure to fulfill.

However, as a woman who will shortly be marrying my girlfriend of the past three years here in Massachusetts, I am a Hope College alumni who feels unwelcome and unloved by the institution as a whole. In April 2010, as the Board of Trustees was revisiting their support of the current Institutional Statement on Homosexuality, I wrote to then-Chairperson Joel Bowens and explained that until Hope College alters its position on human sexuality to be affirming of all a full range of human orientations, identities, and desires, I will not support the college financially. I cannot in good conscience send money to an institution that does not recognize the legitimacy of my primary relationship. I will speak up whenever given the opportunity — such as during fundraising campaigns — against the actions and words of the Board, and of Hope as an institution, that continue to create a hostile environment for faculty, staff, students, and alumni who are not straight or do not believe that non-straight sexuality is immoral.

I will continue to speak highly of the faculty who mentored me, and provide what support I can to individuals and programs that are welcoming and affirming to all (such as the Women’s Studies program). Yet I will not be participating in the Phonathon, in the Hope Fund, or any other fundraising campaigns until Hope College as an institution recognizes and affirms the lives of those of us who find joy and meaning in same-sex relationships.

I look forward to watching Hope’s progress toward a more inclusive future, and hope that someday I will be able to respond to your requests without reservation.

Sincerely,

Anna

Anna J. Cook (’05)
# Xxxxxxx Xx. Apt #
Xxxxxxx, MA
02134

in which I write letters: the problem with throwing religious home-educators under the bus

04 Tuesday Sep 2012

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Dear Claire,

I’m writing to you as a long-time reader of The Tenured Radical, as a fellow blogger, fellow leftist, and individual who spent the first seventeen years of my life learning outside of school — as did my fiancee, until she entered public high school. I wanted to respond to your post regarding home education and the religious right.

I realize that in our contemporary landscape “homeschooling” in the public eye has become virtually synonymous with conservative Christian organizations like the Home School Legal Defense Fund (which actually financed a lot of the court battles that made home education legal for families of all political persuasions), and families who take their children out of public schools for fundamentalist religious reasons. However, I find your characterization of home education “as a grassroots movement” being anti-intellectual and anti-citizenship troubling.

Yes, you are talking about a specific subset of home-educating families and philosophies, but throughout your piece you obscure the wide variety of motivations to home education and styles of learning and teaching by using “home schoolers” as a substitute for “fundamentalist-evangelical Christian conservative homeschoolers.” As a woman who grew up as part of the “grassroots” home education movement in Michigan during the 1980s and 90s, this erases my experience — and the experience of many of my contemporaries — whose home-based education expanded horizons, rather than limiting and controlling them.

You say in your post:

Public education is about putting citizens in the making in one place to talk to each other and learn together.  Is it an accident that when large numbers of voters fail to participate in a common enterprise with Americans not of their choosing that we have so little to say to each other during an election season?

I have seen a lot of anti-homeschooling liberals express similar sentiments, that home education is somehow inherently un-democratic because it removes children from the public square. This is a very limited understanding of the potential of learning outside of school, and in fact many of the progressive home-education folks I know would argue precisely the opposite: that home-based education takes children out of the age-segregated ghetto of school and brings them into the community at large.

As a home-educated child, rather than spending my days in a school building I volunteered at cultural institutions such as the public library and the local history museum, participated in community art classes and music groups, in sports activities and “field trips.” I held part-time jobs as a teenager that not only gave me excellent work experience but also further grounded me in the community. I was involved in church, another locus of social interaction and civic participation.

Obviously, this is not an automatic benefit of home-based education. But I would argue that exposure to a wide range of viewpoints, diversity, and the values of civic participation is not an automatic benefit of public education either. Public schools can be homogeneous, and educators narrow-minded, just like individual parents and families can be. My siblings both attended public high school for part of their grade-school education and benefited from that experience; my brother now teaches art in a public middle school. I am grateful that public provision of education is part of our nation’s commitment to its citizens, and feel that — like hospitals or roads! — public schools are our responsibility to fund whether or not we choose to, or need to, access those services.

Suffice to say, I believe it is a profound mis-characterization of home-education per se to suggest it is at root an anti-democratic, anti-public-spirited endeavor. Obviously, some people who make the choice to home-educate will do so for sectarian reasons, to withdraw from the society at large, because of profound disagreement with mainstream policies. There are examples to be found on the left as well as the right in this regard. But I would argue that this is a freedom-of-conscience decision. There is a long tradition in the United States of allowing parents to decide what the best method of education provision for their family is; compulsory education does not mandate form or content for good reason — local, familial, and religious priorities and needs vary. There is no “one size fits all” that would work well for the majority.

I believe that demonizing/scapegoating people who choose to home-educate for religious reasons actually threatens the freedom of all of us to form and organize our families as we see fit (see: same-sex marriage, polyamory, attachment parenting, etc.). It is certainly within our rights to point out that some forms of parenting foster us/them thinking — but home education is not the cause of that parenting outcome. It is simply the chosen method of delivery for some families. It is a tool, not a uniform ideology, and the values a family holds will shape how home education works for that family, rather than home education pre-determining an exclusionist, reactionary outcome.

In closing I want to thank you for your articulate, insightful blogging at The Chronicle; I have your blog in my Google Reader and regularly click in to read what you have to say. As a fellow blogger I realize that no one post can cover all aspects of an issue. In this instance, I just wanted to share my perspective as someone “on the ground” as a home-educated adult, who has been on the receiving end of fellow liberals’ suspicion of home-based education for many years! I think that the picture is (as always) much more complex than outsiders perceive it to be, and conflating “home education” with “reactionary conservative isolationist” does more harm than good.

Sincerely,
Anna

in which I write letters: tattoos aren’t body vandalism

03 Friday Feb 2012

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Dear Ms. Khoury,

A friend of mine brought your opinion piece, “Why Put a Bumper Sticker on a Ferrari” (The Spectrum 2/2/2012), to my attention yesterday. I appreciate that you are trying to encourage women to celebrate their bodies as they are, without need for adornment. However, I’m troubled by the way you target women specifically, by your argument that tattoos are “vandalism” of the body, and by your assertion that “nothing [productive] comes out of getting a tattoo.”

As a thirty-one-year old woman who made the decision to have my first ink done about a year ago, I’d like to share a very different perspective on body modification and meaning with you. While I don’t believe that being a person with tattoos is in any way superior to being a person without them, I also don’t believe that people (of any gender!) usually choose ink out of body insecurity or in a vacuum of meaning. On the contrary, you only have to follow the Tumblr blog Fuck Yeah, Tattoos! for a few days to witness the incredible breadth and depth of the individual stories behind peoples’ tats. I’d encourage you to check some of those stories out. And while you’re at it, I highly recommend the indie romantic comedy Tattoo: A Love Story (2002). It’s cheesy, yes, but the best part about it are the sequences in which real people tell the stories behind their own tattoos. The person who recommended the film to me was a lesbian in a long-term relationship who got her first tattoo done in honor of her sixty-fifth birthday — hardly someone performing for hetero male attention.

While we’re talking about hetero male attention, I’d like to take a moment to note that I’m very troubled by your framing of body art as a particularly troublesome trend among “ladies.” If the body is, as you write, “the temple [we’ve] been blessed with,” doesn’t that go for male-identified folks as much as it goes for female-identified ones? I would argue that your emphasis on women’s beautiful form, specifically, while ignoring male bodies reinforces our cultural obsession with gender difference — imagining that women’s bodies are somehow public property (expected to be pleasing in the eyes of others) while men’s bodies aren’t a subject of social debate — at least not where decoration is concerned.

As for myself, I tell the story behind my own tattoo on my blog. In the past year, I’ve also written a post about the evolution of my views on body modification. I share your concern over the fact that some peoples’ body modification seems to come from a sense of self-hatred, insecurity, and the desire for conformity or performance for others, rather than self-knowledge, body acceptance, and self-expression. However, as I’ve grown older I’ve come to believe that we are only really in a position to understand the motivations of one person — ourselves. Unless someone tells you the story behind their own physical appearance, you can’t tell by looking at them whether their tattoo is the result of thoughtless whimsy or the manifestation of months — or years — deliberation.

for example go read the story behind this tattoo

I would argue that even those tats acquired in haste — ill-considered, possibly regretted, maybe images or placements their owners feel are a little tacky now — are part of a life story. I know a number of people who have tattoos they commissioned in their teen years which they are now re-working ten, fifteen, twenty years later to invest the ink with new and different meanings.

I’d encourage you to spend some time exploring the myriad reasons why people across time and space have found body modification meaningful. I certainly support your right to celebrate your body as it is, and to choose not to alter it with piercings, tattoos, or any other form of more permanent decoration. I believe that every human being is forever and always beautiful, regardless of how closely they adhere to any one culture’s normative standards of beauty. I believe all human beings have worth, even when they feel (or are deemed by others to be) “ugly.” And that includes people who’ve chosen tats to help them express, to themselves as well as others, who they are in this world we share.

Thanks for taking the time to hear another person’s viewpoint.

Sincerely,
Anna

in which we write letters: stop SOPA

18 Sunday Dec 2011

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Depending on your level of involvement in things internet-political and techy, you may or may not be aware of the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) now making its way through congress. Introduced by representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), this bill mandates widespread monitoring of internet activity and has the potential to cause the internets as we know them to be fundamentally altered as blogs and other social networking sites are shut down for supposed acts “piracy.” You can read more about the act at the Organization for Transformative Works, TechCrunch, and the American Library Association. The letter Hanna and I sent to our representatives is heavily cribbed from the ALA talking points.


Find your U.S. Representative here. 

Find your U.S. Senators here.


18 December 2011
Dear Representative Capuano,
As librarians, bloggers, and registered voters in Allston, Massachusetts, we are writing to ask you to vote against the proposed Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA), H.R. 3261.
This bill, if it becomes law, will cause a widespread “chilling effect” on use of the Internet for commerce, communication, and participation in democratic society. The bill strikes at copyright protections currently granted to libraries and educational institutions by creating the possibility of criminal persecution of institutions and institutional representatives. for online streaming and other use of online resources in library and classroom space. SOPA’s requirements to monitor internet traffic violate free speech and privacy protections and may create new forms of government surveillance of private activities within and outside the United States. The predicted consequences of SOPA are far-reaching. If passed, the potential for new jobs, innovative new ventures, and economic growth will be stifled.
Citizen engagement in online spaces depends on the ability to share and discuss a wide variety of media content across multiple social networking and other Internet platforms. SOPA will effectively shut down the vibrant creativity and vital political discourse that has been made possible by the World Wide Web. On behalf of ourselves, our online community of bloggers, and our library patrons, we ask you to vote against H.R. 3261, and support alternative ways for protecting legitimate copyright interests online.
Sincerely,
Anna J. Cook & Hanna E. Clutterbuck

in which I write letters: dear netflix

19 Tuesday Jul 2011

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Okay, so Hanna and I joined the tens of thousands of Netflix customers who expressed their displeasure at the planned price hikes for the popular DVD rental and online video streaming service, and particularly the way in which the company announced the price changes.  I’m not going to replicate the whole thing here, but I have thrown the letter into a PDF document so anyone who’s interested can read it and/or steal from it.

Mostly, I wanted to offer the contact details I was given by the customer service representative who answered the phone when I called the 1-800 number. Why did I use the telephone you ask? Because I’m apparently the only Netflix user on the planet who managed to discover and then forget that Netflix doesn’t like actually receiving meaningful customer feedback. Nowhere on their site do they have a form for communicating with them about any aspect of their services, nor do they have a customer service email through which to express positive or negative feedback about their company. Instead, I had to call on the phone and insist on obtaining a mailing address where I could direct the letter. I’m serious: the (very courteous) man whom I spoke to really really really wanted to take my feedback via telephone. I explained I already had it all written out and wanted to send it by email or mail thank you very much. He put me on hold and then finally said he’d been given “permission” to give me the corporate headquarters address to send the letter to.

I’m supposed to address it “Attn: Corporate.”

WTF.

they don’t get it either

I mean, even the Massachusetts Historical Society has someone who handles PR, right? We’re an organization of fifty employees! And you’re telling me that Netflix doesn’t have a Customer Service office staffed by people whose sole responsibility is to field incoming letters, emails, telephone calls, texts, tweets, Facebook messages, you name it?? I’m supposed to send my letter to corporate?

Excuse me while I pause to feel a little teeny tiny bit jerked around.


Anyway, here’s the address if you want to lodge a complaint:

Netflix
Attn: Corporate
100 Winchester Circle
Los Gatos, CA
95032

Or, apparently, you can use the popular method of leaving a message on their Facebook page.

in which I write letters: dear alma mater

06 Thursday May 2010

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Today, the Board of Trustees at my alma mater (Hope College) convenes for its spring meeting. On the agenda is the Insitutional Statement on Homosexuality (PDF), written by the college president in 1995 and formally adopted by the board in 2001. The statement basically affirms the position of the Reformed Church in America which condemns homosexual “acts” while “affirming the responsibility of Christians to be fair to and accepting of persons with a homosexual orientation” (yeah, don’t ask; I’m not sure how they expect anyone to actually carry this off).

Anyway, the Hope LGBT Alumni Association called on folks to write the Board a personal letter opposing the statement and calling for its repeal. And because I enjoy writing letters and welcome any opportunity to get up on my soapbox and declaim on issues near and dear to my heart, I jumped at the chance.

And because it’s a shame to share self-righteousness with only the Board of Trustees when you can spread it around the internet, I’m posting it here. I’ll let y’all know what happens in the weeks to come!

Anna J. Cook (’05)
XX Xxxxxxxx Xx Xxx #
Allston, MA 02134

16 April 2010

Joel G. Bowens, Chairperson
Hope College Board of Trustees
c/o Office of the President
141 East 12th Street
Holland, MI 49422-9000

To the Board of Trustees:

I am a third generation alumna of Hope College, a 2005 graduate (summa cum laude) in History and Women’s Studies, and daughter of Mark Cook, Director of the Hope-Geneva Bookstore. I was born and grew up in Holland, only blocks away from the Hope campus, and there are many reasons I am proud to recognize Hope College as part of my heritage.

Since I am also a feminist and in a committed relationship with another woman, the college’s Institutional Statement on Homosexuality is not one of them.

As I know that the Board of Trustees plans to review the Institutional Statement on Homosexuality at its May meeting, I would like to take this opportunity to share with you some of my experiences at Hope College as a non-heterosexual student and as someone who believes non-straight sexuality is completely compatible ethical sexual practice.

I started taking classes in the fall of 1998 as a seventeen year old, eager to explore the brave new world of higher learning, creative writing, and political engagement. In the fall of 1998 Hope College hosted a Critical Issues Symposium on “Feminism and Faith” that was, for me, an initiation into a world of scholarship that spoke directly to my values: I was introduced to a community of scholars and theologians who believed deeply in equality, justice, and the glorious chaos of human existence. In the wake of the Symposium, throughout the 1998-1999 academic year, various speakers came to campus to talk about human sexuality. During that time I witnessed first-hand a great deal of hostility, both among students and on an institutional level, to those values of equality and justice and to the acceptance of human diversity.

I thought seriously after that first year about leaving Hope and transferring to a more welcoming campus. To be honest, despite generous tuition benefits, I would probably not have stayed if it had not been for the Women’s Studies faculty who gave me the space to explore the world of human sexuality and human rights without limiting the possibility of sexual morality to heterosexual relationships. I will be forever grateful for that space in which the faculty at Hope encouraged me to develop my scholarship and articulate my values. Yet it was always clear to me that those values were not in line with the beliefs held by those who formulated institutional policy. The stories I hear from family and friends still involved on campus indicate to me that this situation has not materially changed.

As the Board revisits its support of the Institutional Statement on Homosexuality, I urge you to consider the possibility that a same-sex sexual relationship offers us manifold opportunities to bring joy, love, and well-being into the world – as does any sexual relationship between two enthusiastically consenting individuals. I would encourage you to imagine that Hope College’s role as an institution of higher learning, in the context of the Christian faith, could be to encourage its students to explore their sexual values and ethical sexual practices regardless of the gender of those individuals engaged in any particular sexual activity. This, it seems to me, would be a much more life-affirming than to sit in judgment, suggesting that non-straight people who act on their sexual desires, regardless of ethical practices, are unchristian and therefore marginal members of the Hope College community.

I cannot hope that by writing this letter I will be able to persuade any of you, single-handedly, that non-straight sexual intimacy is no more or less sinful than heterosexual sex. Nor can I claim to understand the myriad pressures that are brought to bear on the Board of Trustees by certain stakeholders to reaffirm the condemnation of a certain proportion of its student, faculty, staff, and alumni population (not to mention their families and friends) for the nature of their love relationships and sexual practices.

Speaking for myself, however, I would like to make it clear to the Board that unless the atmosphere at Hope regarding human sexuality demonstrably improves, I will not support the college as an institution, financially or otherwise. I was clear about that upon graduation, and I am even clearer about that now. I will not support an institution that does not recognize the legitimacy of my primary relationship and continues to create a hostile environment for faculty, staff, and students who are not straight or do not believe that non-straight sexuality is immoral. This makes me sad, since some of the most dedicated faculty and highest-quality teaching I have ever encountered have been at Hope College. However, in the end I am unwilling to support the institutional marginalization of some in the Hope community just for whom they have fallen in love, or share sexual intimacy, with.

To tell any person that being sexual and making positive, fully consensual, sexually intimate connections with another human being is destructive to their spiritual well-being is, in my opinion, an act of violence. To codify such a belief as an institutional statement makes it even more destructive, as it is amplified by the position of authority a college administration holds over its students and employees. I believe such an act of violence runs counter to the Christian message of increasing joy, love, and wholeness in the world.

Ultimately, you may well choose to uphold the current institutional policy. However, it is my hope that before you do, you reckon with the pain and alienation you have caused (and will continue to cause) some within the Hope College community by doing so.

Respectfully submitted for your consideration,

Anna Jane Cook
Allston, MA

*image: Hope College Arch, made available through the public relations office website.